Team spin-off opportunities

Performance & new writing

Two of the professional singers from Rainbow Beach now perform regularly in big bands, with an offer from an arranger to arrange some of the Rainbow Beach songs for production.

Two new Rainbow Beach songs emerged from a new writing collaboration with Lancaster musician Steven Wren, culminating in the tracks “Sunshine” and “Bella’s”. This positive experience led to a new band, Wurlybaby, featuring Steven, which debuted at the Midland Hotel in Morecambe and later headlined for BBC Radio Lancashire at the Empire Theatre, Blackburn, to a sell-out audience, followed by an appearance at the LMC festival.

“Wurlybaby performed at the college in January as part of the Rainbow Beach production — we were really impressed, they have a fantastic sound. The college is thrilled that the band are able to perform at our upcoming festival!”

Adel Burrows, Student Liaison Officer

Actor Denzel Lawrence increased his connections around his gospel music through a songwriting collaboration with Del, resulting in a worship song he performs in London as part of his solo career. After playing Denzil, poet Mark Mace Smith collaborated with Russ Courtenay on a poem for performance at Glastonbury.

Skills development

Co-founder Russ developed his website design skills by designing and hosting the Rainbow Beach site, going on to build websites for other clients under the banner West End Web Design, and to set up several MySpace and YouTube pages. He programmed soundscapes for the Rainbow Beach poetry tour, was asked to write music for another play, and edited the Preston FM radio play — adding sound effects, editing the script and songs, and adding cast and production credits.

Del has taken up the paintbrush again, producing watercolour paintings for publicity purposes — one of which appeared on the 2010 tour poster — and hopes to encourage other local artists and prison inmates inspired by equality and diversity issues to present their work on the Rainbow Beach website during Black History Month. She also created the graphic designs for the poem images, which she hopes will one day appear in a published book of the poems, with support from the library service and those who took part.

Having written the music with Russ and the script, Del undertook her directorial debut for the 2009 tour, and designed the portable set for the 2010 tour, engaging a third-year construction student from Lancaster & Morecambe College to build the trolleys for the quick-change scenery.

Since playing Safra in the Preston FM radio play, Nicola Gardner has gone on to read for BBC Radio 4 plays. Local journalist Rachel Ryan took up freelance work as a result of collaborating with Rainbow Beach, putting together a complete press campaign for 2009/10 activities. Actor Minyahil K. Giorgis, who played Denzil and Jack, renewed his photography and editing skills on tour and now supplements his income with photo shoots for Rainbow Beach and other actors. Amie Buhari developed her storytelling skills playing the Narrator, and increased her workshop experience leading poetry sessions with the general public.